Yeah!! Hail to Softimage, winner of three awards at VES ...

[Eugen]

That's the way I see it, too. Buying a major application is a bit like adopting a child - you have to take care, nourish, groom, and love it... if you realize that it doesn't fit in the family for whatever reason, what are you going to do? Especially as is has quite some wit, and it's stepbrothers and -sisters sometimes might even look a litte lame besides it... embarrassing!

[SreckoM]

Politics? Fxguide is pimping other products like Houdini, Cinema4D, Mari and Nuke. They just post and link whatever they like and how they like it.

Sheesh ! Politics, conspiracies, call it whatever you want. The fact is: Softimage has more potential than Maya and Max, but AD won't market it aggressively for obvious reasons that doesn't need mentioning. Worse comes to worse, it's not hard for AD to pay FXguide to have them NOT post Softimage in their listings. Call me a crazy if you like, but that's my belief and I'm gonna stick by it.

Well it is to be biased toward XSI here, but talking about potential, it is not like that. As a matter a fact Maya has much more potential than XSI. It is not that AD decided blindly, obviously that they did some research and results shown that it is best (read more profitable) to push Maya. There are many obvious, already mentioned, reasons. We need to be realistic here.

[MauricioPC]

Sheesh ! Politics, conspiracies, call it whatever you want. The fact is: Softimage has more potential than Maya and Max, but AD won't market it aggressively for obvious reasons that doesn't need mentioning. Worse comes to worse, it's not hard for AD to pay FXguide to have them NOT post Softimage in their listings. Call me a crazy if you like, but that's my belief and I'm gonna stick by it.

Well it is to be biased toward XSI here, but talking about potential, it is not like that. As a matter a fact Maya has much more potential than XSI. It is not that AD decided blindly, obviously that they did some research and results shown that it is best (read more profitable) to push Maya. There are many obvious, already mentioned, reasons. We need to be realistic here.

I agree. But there are some things in 3ds Max that I wish it was in Maya or Softimage (modeling wise). I mean, screen mode, edge constrain (for vertex and edges) and proper symmetry are a must. Maya symmetry is a bad joke.

Moderator edit: fixed the quote - HB

[Hirazi Blue]

obviously that they did some research and results shown that it is best (read more profitable) to push Maya.

AFAIK, Autodesk doesn't have to do much research to reach that conclusion, as the Maya user base always has been much larger that the Softimage one. I won't bore you with "guestimates", but from what I've heard the difference is quite significant. Maya being their favorite toy is a no-brainer, I'm afraid. Strength in numbers...

[mc_axe]

[MauricioPC]

Man ... if the graphitte modeling toolkit and freeform were ported to Softimage and Maya, that would be WOW! But on Max it's soooooooo slow. But it's great features.

I'm no programmer, so when I ask, take it easy. How hard is to port a plugin to other apps? There's some amazing features in Max. People talk about the modeling toolkit of Maya but it doesn't hold nothing in comparison with Max one.

[McNistor]

MauricioPC, I don't know what you're fantasizing about or why but I trust you don't do much modeling in Softimage, right? Otherwise you'd know that overall XSI has the best poly modeling of the three.

Edge-Contrain? Yes there's in XSI, use tweek tool (M) and middle click on edges for "sliding"
What is "screen mode", moving objects in the screen space? XSI has that too - just click in the middle of the transform gizmo and it'll move in screen space. I know it's not exactly the same but I don't see any practical situation you'd need numeric input for a screen space frame of reference.

Anyway, every time I heard someone wanting modeling tools from 3dsMax I found out that they're still modeling in Max (which makes them wanting to port their Max workflow/habits to the other s/w they're using) and in fact they're not really 100% familiar with XSI's modeling tools.
Maybe I'm ignorant and I'm not familiar with how much 3dsMax has improved in the last several versions modeling wise, so please name one poly modeling feature you have in Max and you miss in XSI, apart from those you already mentioned which I hope I clarified.

There were a few things XSI was notoriously bad at regarding poly modeling one of which I've raged about for quite a while on forums: extrude along normals.
It finally came and that shut me up as it was really the only thing I missed from Max.
Other people had a thing with a "shell" operation (adding thickness to one sided objects). I didn't care for that as it was a very quick work-around which involved a few more steps (duplicating polys, using a Push, invert them and then connect the two sides). It might be still the preferred method when the thickness operation added later is too slow.

[Eugen]

As a sidenote:
True, SI's poly modeling is very good, but 2 things are NOT good: curve editing and extrusions. Working 2D, and making the jump from 2D to 3D, so to speak. Won't go into details here, different topic (Got a story to tell about all this).
One MUST have in my book out of 3ds max' modeling toolset is the 'Sweep'-modifier, so I wrote my own (ExtrudeAlongCurve2). It works well already, but it's not feature complete, so I refuse from releasing it already, but time will come. (PowerExtrude is an alternative, but I found some flaws in it.)

[Hirazi Blue]

You know you'll have to release your ExtrudeAlongCurve2 in this fiscal quarter now, don't you?
Oh no, that only applies to Autodesk.

Interesting teaser, though, can't wait to see/hear more...

[MauricioPC]

MauricioPC, I don't know what you're fantasizing about or why but I trust you don't do much modeling in Softimage, right? Otherwise you'd know that overall XSI has the best poly modeling of the three.

Edge-Contrain? Yes there's in XSI, use tweek tool (M) and middle click on edges for "sliding"
What is "screen mode", moving objects in the screen space? XSI has that too - just click in the middle of the transform gizmo and it'll move in screen space. I know it's not exactly the same but I don't see any practical situation you'd need numeric input for a screen space frame of reference.

Anyway, every time I heard someone wanting modeling tools from 3dsMax I found out that they're still modeling in Max (which makes them wanting to port their Max workflow/habits to the other s/w they're using) and in fact they're not really 100% familiar with XSI's modeling tools.
Maybe I'm ignorant and I'm not familiar with how much 3dsMax has improved in the last several versions modeling wise, so please name one poly modeling feature you have in Max and you miss in XSI, apart from those you already mentioned which I hope I clarified.

There were a few things XSI was notoriously bad at regarding poly modeling one of which I've raged about for quite a while on forums: extrude along normals.
It finally came and that shut me up as it was really the only thing I missed from Max.
Other people had a thing with a "shell" operation (adding thickness to one sided objects). I didn't care for that as it was a very quick work-around which involved a few more steps (duplicating polys, using a Push, invert them and then connect the two sides). It might be still the preferred method when the thickness operation added later is too slow.

Hi McNistor,

I'll try later today to record a video for the screen feature, because it's difficult to explain in words. Since I'm doing a game character workshop, I'm picking up some workflows in Max which I'm liking it. I actually don't use Max, but since the instructor uses it, I'm following on it and trying to replicate some things in Softimage and Maya, which are the ones I'm actually studying.

But let me try to explain. When you are modeling, and you are pushing and pulling vertices, the gizmo works in all three directions. When you use the "screen axis", the gizmo always show only two, so you can't screw.

The edge constrain thing is something that works when use edit vertices and edges. I don't remember if that work in Softimage or if Softimage is like Maya and only work when you edit edges. If it's like Maya, than it's way worst than Max.

It's not that this are game changers, I just realized that when you are modeling for 5h+, simple things that makes your work with less clicking in the end of the day make your hand hurts less.


But yeah ... I'm still learning more of Softimage modeling. It's just I searched on the web and I haven't found something explaining me how to do it, so I thought it didn't had.


As for the Graphite and Freeform toolkit, watch this videos. If you don't see value in this, than it's not worth discussing it. But yes, these tools are amazing, but since 3ds Max is sooooooo slow, just to open the f*ck ribbon with the tools it has lag. It's unbelievable. Sometimes it looks like 3ds Max is a super program and I would need a 54-core processor and 256Gigs of ram to have a snap response. But I think even with a spec like that, it would still be slow.

[Nox]

I'm still wondering how people model in Max without proper camera based selection. Must be real pain.

[McNistor]

@MauricioPC
1st video shows retopology stuff which in my book is not traditional poly modeling. I repeat, in my book. There are a lot of retopo tools out there that do an amazing job like Zbrush (zremesher), Topogun, 3dCoat and others so to me retopo in an animation program seems very situational.

2nd video shows tools that are present in XSI long before Max's graphite tools or at least there are methods (work-arounds) to obtaining the same. That coupled with the "smoothness" of XSI compared to Max makes it no brainer when choosing between the two as far as poly modeling goes.

Keep in mind that although I might be a bit biased here, I speak from experience - before jumping to XSI I was a very proficient Max modeler (granted, before graphite but I looked into it closely) and now I'm even better in XSI so I know both tools very well.

[MauricioPC]

Hey McNistor,


I'm no experience modeler, so take what I was saying with a grain of salt. But for me, in terms of modeling, I'm really liking Max tools. My main comparison is more to Maya than Softimage. I think the new modeling toolkit of Maya to be inferior to the tools in Max, but the problem with Max is that the software is slow. Everything takes time to give you a response. That's a real pain in the *ss.

Now ... symmetry for instance is more boring to work in Maya or Softimage as in comparison to the modifier in Max, which I think works really well. Since I'm honing my skills in modeling, besides this workshop, I've being doing some tuts from Digital Tutors on interpretative modeling and there you use a lot of bend deformers and other stuff. When ... I must be an idiot because I couldn't make the bend deformer in Softimage to work like it worked in Maya or Max and I took much more time to get the same result.

I asked a friend of mine about the "screen view" mode (he uses Softimage for quite some time) and he didn't know if Softimage had this. I think this view of the manipulator coupled with the vertex constrain to edge improves a lot the productivity of the modeling.

I must say that I drifted away from Softimage a little ... because of the training I'm doing right now of modeling and FX. I do intend to come back, but it's nice to see some different perspective of working knowledge. I've seen some Maya videos of modeling (for example) and I think the workflow is worst. But I'm only talking about modeling ... and maybe texturing.

Anyway ... thanks for the replies. Now I'm back to studying Français. Cheers.

[McNistor]

I already told you XSI has "screen space" translate (by clicking in the middle of the gizmo, not picking a mode like "local" ) and "edge constrain" as well by using the tweak tool 'M'. They don't work exactly like in 3dsMax but that's not a bad thing necessarily.
You can also set the Plane ref to a picked object aligned to the screen by using the small x,y,z in the top left near the eye icon and set the move tool to plane or ref. A bit more convoluted, but if you really insist on having the gizmo also in the screen space, then this is one way to achieve that.

A subjective thing is the fact that I model a lot faster in XSI than I was in 3dsMax. What is not subjective however is that regardless of what you're used to work with, the tools are there waiting for you to discover them and get accustomed to.

p.s. I agree with what you're saying about 3dsMax. It's slow and buggy as hell and it crashes out of nowhere. They should change the name to 3dsCrash.

[luceric]

I'm still wondering how people model in Max without proper camera based selection. Must be real pain.

sorry, what's camera based selection? do you mean the preselection highlight in the tweak tool?

[Bullit]

My 2 pence... think Softimage modeling is much better than 3Dsmax except the bend - that is the reason there is a plugin called agbend -

https://www.si-community.com/forum/v ... f=9&t=1549

For the most recent in Softimage modeling advances see this about 2012 SAP see the smooth edge loop specially

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/go ... _5_is_here